Three Simple Rules for B2B 2.0

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Nearly half of all B2B buyers find their products and vendors and complete their purchase online. Surveys indicate over 80 percent plan to annually increase online spending budgets through 2011. We have three simple and proven rules for your B2B 2.0 marketing strategy to assist in your planning.

Three Simple Rules for B2B 2.0.

Nearly half of all B2B buyers find their products and vendors and complete their purchase online. Surveys indicate over 80 percent plan to annually increase online spending budgets through 2011. We have three simple and proven rules for your B2B 2.0 marketing strategy to assist in your planning:

1. Get personal - Focus on delivering messages and content that is relevant to each individual customer or prospect.
2. Get social - Facilitate a collaborative conversation with your customers and prospects that increases your value to them and results in positive entanglement.
3. Get viral - No one is a better advocate of your company, products and services than someone other than you. Help others tell your story.

1. Get Personal

For the first time ever, we are in the midst of the perfect storm that makes one-to-one marketing truly a reality.

• Online critical mass - Over 85 percent of business buyers go online during the purchasing process, and 83 percent found the vendor online from whom they eventually purchased.
• Data sophistication - Marketers now have the ability to collect, assimilate, analyze and create actionable intelligence that forms the basis of an automated individual customer contact strategy, taking customer relationship management (CRM) to a new level.
• Web 2.0 - The technology has finally caught up with the one-to-one vision, giving marketers tools that enhance creativity, information sharing and, most notably, collaboration among users.

Growing Expectations

Personalization is a proven way to increase response; however, the simple personalization that worked a few years ago - use of recipient's name, address and basic personal information - is no longer enough. Two-thirds of U.S. direct mail shows evidence of this basic level of personalization, and 89 percent of marketers plan to enhance their personalization and targeting efforts in 2008.

pURLs of Wisdom

One of the most cost-effective, quick-win personalization strategies to consider is the use of personal URLs (pURLs). pURLs are customized URLs that often include the customer or prospect's name and lead to a personalized microsite that leverages available data to target a specific individual's profile, customizing text, graphics, offers and even interactive elements that are personalized on-the-fly for each individual. The goal is to create a personal relationship with each customer or prospect to increase response and conversion. We define conversion as any visitor interaction that is considered valuable such as a sales inquiry, lead or purchase.

It makes sense that B2B marketers using pURLs are getting conversion rate increases of 50 percent and higher than typical direct marketing campaigns with traditional landing pages. After all, they know who the prospect or customer is, address them by name, provide them with the information they are looking for and make it easy to respond.

Conversion by DesignTM

Conversion by DesignTM, our proprietary personalization tool, significantly improves campaign conversion rates by:

• Improving the quality of traffic through focusing on prospects with the greatest likelihood to convert
• Improving the relevance of landing page and microsite content
• Using campaign-focused environments typically outside company Web sites for speed, cost savings and simplicity
• Utilizing measurement and ongoing optimization to meet bottom-line objectives

Record-Level Conversion Rates

Optimum LightpathSM, a business communications provider that delivers data, Internet, voice and video transport solutions and managed services to mid-sized and large organizations in the New York metro area, has increased its level of sophistication in targeting through our Conversion by DesignTM product that includes extensive data analytics, testing, optimization and campaign messaging with pURLs.

As part of an integrated campaign that included outbound telemarketing, direct mail and e-mail, Optimum Lightpath invited prospects to get more information at their own pURL (www.optimumlightpath.com/johnsmith). When prospects visit their pURL microsite, they are greeted by name and provided information pertinent to their vertical market, including vertical-specific video testimonials from current Optimum Lightpath customers. To eliminate barriers to response, the sales-inquiry fields are prepopulated with all of the data available for each prospect.

The Conversion by DesignTM lead-generation strategy with pURLs has resulted in conversion rates (number of leads/number of visitors from pURLs) of up to 50 percent higher than for prospects not provided with a pURL.

2. Get Social

Prospecting is no longer about just connecting to individual customers; it's about connecting to their networks.

A 2007 study by B2B Online found that 26 percent of respondents indicated that they have used a social networking site as a marketing channel, while another 22 percent indicated that they plan to do so this year. Examples of recent specialized B2B networks that have launched include:

• Forbes.com and The Wall Street Journal both announced social networks devoted to women in business. Executive Women's Network by Forbes.com has designed an exclusive area for women available by invitation only.
• Bank of America, American Express, AT&T, Capital One and many others are targeting small businesses with their own social network efforts.
• ITtoolbox Community Hub is a network for IT professionals that, among other things, allows users to share and compare information with peers who have similar interests, including evaluating IT vendors.

They're Talking Anyway. Facilitate the Conversation.

Your best and worst customers now have a greater share of trusted voice than you can amass through conventional media. Your brand is quickly becoming what they deem it to be: hero, villain or otherwise. It is a fact. Your customers are talking about your products and services - on discussion boards and through e-mail. While this is difficult for most B2B marketers to confront, the natural forces of human nature are now driving the majority of all decisions. The best way to win is to cede control of their conversations. In an environment where it is increasingly difficult to differentiate products and services based on traditional benchmarks like features or price, it is often the "wisdom of the crowd" or the public knowledge created by "volunteer self-designated experts" who allow you to have a competitive edge.

B2B marketers can either create their own public or private network or look for advertising or sponsorship opportunities on other networks. One of the primary advantages of developing your own social network is that along with providing prospects with the platform for discussion, you can reap the benefits:

• Online market research - Many companies are leveraging mass user contributions in the product development and/or marketing process. Use the social environment to solicit customers' opinions with blogs, wikis, social tagging, surveys and polls. Refine product development and reduce your go-tomarket time by posting ideas and getting immediate customer feedback.
• Be the first to know - Facilitating your own social network puts you in a position to be the first to hear when problems occur with your products, services or supply chain. But be prepared for being open to hearing criticism. The good news is you can be the first to acknowledge the issue and fix it, or correct misinformation.
• Real customer value - Social networks that attract and provide forums for both your prospects and their customer prospects can assist you in influencing end users and helping your customers sell your products.
• Brand entanglement - Social networking creates an intimate and ongoing collaboration between customers, prospects and the company. When customers receive a tangible benefit for this investment, they are less likely to replicate the effort with a competitor. Customers become positively entangled with your company.
• Personalized targeting - The data collection and analysis power of a social network puts you in a better position to meet your goals through personalized targeting opportunities.

The Power of the Influencer

Online social networks produce content at a level of granularity and a volume that makes for powerful targeting opportunities. We go far beyond typical volumetrics to understand the fiber of the network.

• Who is connecting?
• Who are they connected to?
• How do they influence the network?

We monetize the value of key influencers within a network. Each member (or node) is given an engagement score based on the degree to which they are connected and how they influence the flow of information. In social networks, the inner circle of connections typically represents about 20 percent of members. By understanding the characteristics and actions of this influential group, content can be specifically targeted to them and others like them can be recruited. They in turn spread your message at a greater trusted velocity than conventional means could provide.

3. Get Viral

Word-of-mouth is the oldest and most powerful marketing medium. Regardless of which study you read, word-of-mouth tops the list of purchase influencers in the B2B buy cycle. Utilizing the online environment to spread word-of-mouth has some significant advantages, not the least of which is measurement and the ability to have some fun.

Business Messages Can Be Fun

If you want to virally pass around value, make sure to make your message fun. Cisco used a hilarious video called "Don't Have a Meltdown" to reach IT professionals and other business buyers to promote the benefits of their unified mobile communicator service and, at last count, had over 260,000 views on YouTube. SolidWorks, a CAD software company who sells to engineers, used a viral video featuring origami master, Torimoto, to demonstrate the features of their products.

Agilent Technologies is a world-leading provider to life science and chemical analysis industries. Each year they publish a very thick catalog that serves as the definitive scientific reference to assist customers in ordering appropriate parts and supplies. They spoke to 10 different global verticals with humorbased viral messages that focused on requesting catalogues. The videos were shared around the world, orders were up double-digits worldwide and over 25 percent of all viewers forwarded the video.

Know Your Buyer

Viral marketing campaigns work for both awareness and lead generation. The important thing to remember when getting started is to consider the needs of your buyer when developing your content. A great first step is to develop a buyer persona, a demographic group of buyers that have similarities and will benefit from your products or services. These are the people you want viewing your video, not curious teenagers browsing YouTube.

Measure

The greatest thing about online word-of-mouth is that you have the potential to quantify how many people are talking and what they are saying. Online buzz is getting easier to monitor with products like BuzzMetrics by ACNielsen, which allows companies to track online discussion regarding specific brands based on both volume and sentiment. Here are a few things that marketers can track in addition to leads and sales:

• How many people are exposed to your products and services?
• How often are bloggers mentioning you?
• What are the bloggers saying?

Thank You!

We're hopeful this paper provides you some food for thought as you develop your online marketing plans for 2009. Every company and their marketing situation is unique and warrants a customized, personalized approach. If you would like more insights or need assistance with your planning, link me on LinkedIn, call or e-mail me and we'll "get personal!"

Best, Melinda Gladitsch
Director of Strategy
mgladitsch@hawkeyeww.com
970-476-2071 x 5300
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mgladitsch

References

• hawkeye proprietary studies and research
• "B2B Marketing Online: Business Meets Social Media," eMarketer, January 2008
• "2008 State of the Marketer," Eloqua
• "B-to-B Marketing in 2008: Trends in Strategies and Spending,
• " MarketingProfs with Forrester Research "What's in the Mailbox? The Impact of One-to-One Marketing on Consumer Response," January 2007, Mintel Comperemedia 2007 Business to Business Survey, Enquiro Research